When two or more people team up to achieve a goal, it's generally assumed that their goals are reasonably similar. At the very least, what one of them wants to achieve shouldn't conflict with what the others want to achieve. Otherwise, why would they team up?

Because they didn't know what their teammates are after.

Maybe someone lied to them, or maybe they just never discussed the plan in enough detail to know their allies' true goals. Then again, they may have started with the same general goal and one (or more) of the teammates has slipped in their ethical standards and is willing to cross any lines to achieve it. In any case, it's only when their long, elaborate plan is nearing completion that they finally discover what they've been working toward all this time (and how they mean to finally get it). Their reaction is inevitably, "Whoa, I didn't sign on for that!"

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

In Dragon Ball, Adjutant Black, the right hand man of Commander Red of the Red Ribbon Army, believed that his commander was after the wish-granting Dragon Balls in order to Take Over the World. However, when he learns that the commander actually intended to make himself taller using the wish, and that he was willing to throw away all of his men's lives for his selfish wish, Black promptly shoots him dead.

A comedic example in One Piece. Trafalgar Law allied the Heart Pirates with the Straw Hat Pirates in hopes of getting a powerful ally to take down the operation at Punk Hazard and eventually one of the Yonko. He did. What he did not sign on for was the Straw Hats' various... quirks.

On a more serious note, he also quit working for Caesar Clown on the spot after he found out about how Clown was drugging the children of Punk Hazard with a highly addictive stimulant that dramatically reduced their lifespan in order to keep them from trying to rebel or leave. His reaction was more or less along the lines of "if I had known about this beforehand, I never would have had anything to do with you in the first place.", and it served as a perfect example of just how far beyond the pale Clown had gone.

Jean, Connie, and Sasha from Attack on Titan all blanch at the thought that they may be ordered to kill other humans. Jean becomes the vocal opposition to this change in tactics, stating that he joined the Survey Corps to fight Titans, not other humans. When his hesitance to pull the trigger on an enemy nearly costs him his life, he is forced to accept the necessity of killing.

Comics

In Marvel Comics' Age of Apocalypse, Sabretooth is an X-Man. In his backstory, he revolted when he learned that Apocalypse hired him for a much more lethal plan than he had realized, and he regards this as atonement.

Dark was once a member of Fairy Tale, but was Locked Out of the Loop about their Kill All Humans agenda. He discovered the truth when he learned that they planned to destroy Yokai Academy for teaching human/monster co-existence, and promptly defected.

In Act III, Akua and Kahlua joined up with Fairy Tale and help Kiria in his plan with the intent to make Issa one of the top dark lords once humanity is subjugated. They are completely shocked when they find out that Kiria in fact planned to infect them with Blackheart and have them kill Issa so he would be the only ruler. They spend the entirety of Act IV trying to atone for their mistake.

The Legend of Spyro: A New Dawn: Drake was once a member of the Ape forces that raided the Dragon Temple on the day of Spyro's hatching. He only smashed one dragon egg that night... and immediately suffered a Heel Realization and fled Gaul's army. Even in the present time, he can't quite forgive himself.

In the Pony POV Series Wedding Arc two Changelings named Cricket and Monarch have a Heel Realization after coming to care about ponies and see them as fellow beings instead of cattle. They have this reaction when, by extension, that means their orders to kill Trixie amount to cold blooded murder, something they didn't sign on for. So they fake her death and aid civilians in making it to shelter in the coming conflict.

Film

Many James Bond films have a scene where the Big Bad meets his fellow villains to discuss their nefarious plans, and one of them realizes the scheme is far more drastic than he had thought ("You want to blow up Silicon Valley?!") He'll pull out, saying that he can't go along with something like that - and will promptly be Thrown from the Zeppelin so he can't tell anyone else.

In The Rocketeer, gangster Eddie Valentine enthusiastically assists criminal mastermind Neville Sinclair in the latter's attempt to steal the rocket pack... Until he finds out that Sinclair is planning on handing the thing over to the Nazis rather than use it to pull bigger crimes. As Valentine says, "I may not make an honest buck, but I'm 100% American..."

In The Rock, Ed Harris' character has no intention of actually going through with his threatened chemical attack if his demands aren't met. He finds out at the end that his associates feel differently.

More specifically, they felt that there was no going back — when his bluff is called, he folds but they decide to stay all in.

One of Xander Drax's underlings in The Phantom is uncomfortable with the idea of obtaining power through occult means. He's speared in the back for his trouble.

A variation in the first Mission: Impossible movie: Ethan gives the top-secret N.O.C. list to Luther because it's not what Luther signed up for, so he knows he won't try to steal it for his own hands.

In James Cameron's Avatar, Action Girlmercenary pilot Trudi refuses to take part in the destruction of the Na'vi home and ultimately turns against Colonel Quaritch, saying "Screw this. I didn't sign up for this shit!"

In The Dark Knight, the officer riding shotgun in the prison transport during the car chase shouts "I didn't sign up for this!" when the Joker takes out the police car in front of the transport with a rocket launcher.

In The Princess Bride, Inigo and Fezzik are dismayed to learn Vizzini's plan involves killing Buttercup.

On a more comedic note, Zangief fromStreet Fighter bought into Bison's aspirations hook, line, and sinker. It takes Dee-Jay telling him outright that "We're the bad guys!" to get Zangief to pull a Heel-Face Turn.

In the beginning of Edge of Tomorrow Cage tells General Brigham that he is a PR person and he did not sign up to go into a warzone and possibly get killed. Considering that Cage is a major in the US Army and there is a massive war going on against an alien threat, this is a ludicrous thing to say to a four star general who is also Cage's superior officer. Brigham is so disgusted by Cage's cowardice that he has him arrested for desertion, busted down to private and sent to a penal unit where he will be in the first wave of the upcoming invasion.

In Broken Arrow, Mr. Pritchett agreed to help Deakins steal two nuclear warheads—but not detonate one of them. When he protests, Deakins kills him.

Splash: Dr. Kornbluth exposes Madison as a mermaid in public, causing her to be captured by government scientists for examination. When he discovers that said scientists plan to dissect Madison, he is left guilt-ridden and helps Allen break her out, having only wanted to prove he wasn't crazy.

In Big Hero 6, when Hiro removes Baymax's caregiver programming and tries to have him kill Callaghan in revenge for his brother's death, his allies call him on it, with Wasabi telling him, "What you just did, we never signed on for."

Literature

In the Discworld novel Hogfather, Mr. Teatime hires several Mooks to help him kill the Hogfather (Discworld's version of Santa Claus). It's not until near the end of the book that Teatime reveals that this is what all their elaborate plans were for. One of the Mooks, despite being a thug and murderer, does not take kindly to the idea of eliminating their universe's version of Christmas and turns on Mr. Teatime.

Even before that, there was grumbling: "He ain't just after money, you know." "Yeah, well, I didn't sign up for world domination. That kind of stuff gets you into trouble."

That could also have something to do with Voldemort's treatment of Kreacher.

In Order of the Phoenix, Sirius mentions that there were a number of Old Name families like his own who initially thought that Voldemort had the right idea, but then quickly changed their minds about him when they saw how far he was willing to go for Pureblood Supremacy.

Mundungus Fletcher does one of these as well, except he really never did sign on to die for Harry, as he tells him.

The Malfoys seem to have some major regrets about joining up with Voldemort by the final book, to the point where Draco refuses to firmly say whether it's really Harry or not when he's captured by the Death Eaters and Narcissa and Lucius lie and tell Voldemort Harry is dead, and then refuse to fight in the subsequent fracas because they know it means they will be reunited with their son.

A rare non-heroic example: Gilderoy Lockhart joined up to the Defense of the Dark Arts teaching profession at Hogwarts. However, when he discovered that a girl was kidnapped. He attempted to flee, and implies that he's doing so because "saving students was not part of the job description." It's all the more unheroic because it WAS his job as a teacher at Hogwarts to protect the students, especially as the combat specialist.

Live Action TV

In LOST, after witnessing why Keamy's mercenary team was really sent to the Island, their fellow freighter passenger Miles almost quotes the trope name verbatim.

General Hospital: During the 2005 storyline in which A.J. kidnapped Sonny's children as part of his latest scheme to get Michael back, his father Alan is sympathetic and initially tries to help him, only to turn him in to the police when he see that A.J. is perfectly willing to use violence to get what he wants. In turn, A.J. shoots him in the back and leaves him wheelchair-bound.

Video Games

After the Resonance Cascade in Half-Life, a special forces group of the United States military (the Hazardous Environment Containment Unit) arrives to clean up the situation—not only by stopping the Xen invasion, but by "silencing" all Black Mesa personnel with lethal force in order to keep knowledge of the incident secret. While some of the soldiers are sociopathic and most carry out their orders without complaint, one Marine in "On A Rail" makes it clear killing civilians is not what he signed on for.

"I didn't sign on for this shit! Monsters sure, but civilians? ...Who ordered this operation anyway?"

There's more soldiers in Half-Life: Opposing Force who are clearly not happy with what they've been ordered to do.

In the third Spyro the Dragon game, the Sorceress and her apprentice Bianca steal dragon eggs and take them to their Forgotten Worlds. Bianca does it because the magic in their worlds is disappearing without the presence of dragons to maintain it. When she discovers the Sorceress' real reason for wanting the eggs—to make an immortality potion from baby dragon wings—she promptly does a Heel-Face Turn and joins Spyro and his friends in trying to stop her.

Kazuhira Miller in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker worked with Cipher as a neutral business partner and have Big Boss rejoin the organization with the intention of expanding the Militaires Sans Frontieres. After it became apparent that Cipher was perfectly willing to ruin the Militaires Sans Frontieres should Big Boss refuse to rejoin by having one of their agents launch a nuclear weapon from their defense system at the East Coast of the United States and then frame Militaires Sans Frontieres, it is heavily implied that Miller quit working with Cipher.

Huey says this, word for word, when he learned that Coldman was going to launch a live nuke from Peace Walker as the final part of its test.

How could we forget Otacon in Metal Gear Solid? He helped build Metal Gear REX without any idea that it was gonna be used for nuclear assaults.

Also, in Metal Gear Solid 2, President James Johnson defected from the Patriots to Solidus's Sons of Liberty group and hijack Arsenal Gear. However, whereas he himself wanted to use it as a bargaining chip to be put in the inner circle of the Patriots, Solidus himself desired to use it to actually destroy the Patriots. When Johnson discovered this, he was implied to have refused to cooperate any further, only for it to be too late.

This is Elle Cutleaf's reason for helping you against her Blackwold brethren early in the Combe segment of the Race of Man storyline in The Lord of the Rings Online. The Blackwolds were originally petty brigands until their leader Skunkwood made a deal with the forces of Angmar, a greater evil than Elle was willing to have any kind of part of. Among other things, they took several dogs that Elle had supplied them with and bred them with monstrous Wargs, which did not sit well with her at all.

In Wizard101 when the player is retrieving the pieces of the stone of Mazzaroth, the final piece is held by Vesna Shadowscar. Upon the player arriving she refuses to fight the player and tells the Shadow Weavers that fighting wizards was not part of the bargain. She'd heard of the player before. This may explain why she's one of only human besides the player that is still alive in Dragonspyre.

Late in Modern Warfare 3, Yuri explains that the reason he betrayed Makarov was because he went from a soldier to fanatical lunatic bent on conquering the world for Ultranationalist Russia, willing to use nuclear weapons and massacre civilians to get the insane, mutually-destructive war he wants.

This isn't what we signed up for. I let myself believe we were making things better. But we're not.

In reference to thecrazedMarines in the earlygamesofHalo, Bungie put in one of these troopers in Halo: Reach who had been driven mad by the invading Covenant, gibbering that he had signed on to fight Insurrectionists, not aliens.

Tychus Findlay, in Starcraft II Wings Of Liberty, protests along these lines when Raynor reveals that they're going to Char to confront Kerrigan. He tries to convince Jim to just take the money and run. As Gabriel Tosh notes if you still have him there, Tychus is trying to avoid doing something he doesn't want to—that "something" later revealed to be that Tychus has been tasked with killing Kerrigan, despite the wishes of his friend. Tychus dies on Char, after attempting to shoot Kerrigan—a situation which may or may not have been a case of Suicide by Cop.

Tychus also protests quite strongly to facing down an army-strength Tal'darim force on the Xel'naga worldship, backed up by "rip-fields" that tear apart anything that approaches them, with a snarl that he "didn't sign up for no suicide mission".

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance: Early in the game, Neku and Shiki both make a deal with Young Xehanort to turn Sora and Riku, respectively, over to him in exchange for being able to leave the Reapers' Game and go home. However, both Neku and Shiki turn on him when Young Xehanort actually attacks them, as he apparently promised them beforehand that he wouldn't hurt Sora and Riku.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Near the end of the game, Silver Sable is hired by Bolivar Trask to capture Spider-Man. When their fight on a bridge ends up endangering innocent lives, Sable helps Spidey save them. As she explains, she was hired to capture Spider-Man, not to kill innocent people.

Security Guard's Night 1 Message: Now, concerning your safety: the only real risk to you as the night watchman here, if any, is the fact that these characters... uhh, if they happen to see you after hours probably won't recognize you as a person. They'll-they'll most likely see you as a metal endo-skeleton without its costume on. Now, since that's against the rules at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, they'll probably try ta... forcefully stuff you inside a Freddy Fazbear suit. Umm, now that wouldn't be so bad if the suits themselves weren't filled with crossbeams, wires and animatronic devices, especially around the facial area, so you can imagine how having your head forced inside one of those could cause a bit of discomfort... and death. Uhh... the only parts of you that would likely see the light of day again would be your eyeballs and teeth that would pop out the front of the mask, heh... Yeah, they don't tell you these things when you sign up...

Gaius is recruited as the result of this; he first appears as part of a group of soldiers on an assassination mission. Upon finding out what their real goal is (he had been brought in as a thief), he claims this trope, and can be bribed with candy to join your side.

Similarly, Tharja joins the protagonists after admitting that she doesn't really believe in her own side's cause.

In Sonic Chronicles, Shade the Echidna loyally serves Imperator Ix in his efforts to free their clan from the Pocket Dimension they've been trapped in. When Ix mentions his intention to have them go on to conquer the outside world, Shade is horrified and promptly jumps ship in favor of the heroes, as she only ever wanted to get out.

The premise of the webcomic Watchdogs hinges on this trope. An honest man living in a city overrun by crime and vice is sick of living in fear and wants to fight back, Batman-style. He finds a neighbor with similar ideal and access to the necessary gadgets, and they become vigilantes. Soon after, the man finds out that his partner is actually a white supremacist and wants to use their team to attack minorities. When confronted, the neighbor's excuse is that he forgot to tell his partner he was racist.

The guys at Cinema Sins must hate it when this line is used by someone who should have expected something like in whatever they signed up for, as they frequently mock when someone uses it. For example, they respond to the example from Avatar with "You fly a military helicopter and you didn't sign up for this shit?!" and the one from The Dark Knight gets "Really?! You are a SWAT officer!!"

Western Animation

In The Simpsons, the founding of Springfield and Shelbyville, as well as the feud between the two towns that followed, is based on this trope. Originally the town founders, Jebediah Springfield and Shelbyville Manhattan were allies who led a group of pioneers in pursuit of new lands to settle. Once they found the site for their settlement, however ...

Jebediah: People, our search is over. On this site we shall build a new town, where we can worship freely, govern justly and grow vast fields of hemp for making ropes and blankets.

Jebediah: I was - wha ... what are you talking about, Shelbyville? Why would we want to marry our cousins?

Shelbyville: Because they're so attractive. I thought that was the whole point of this journey?

In Justice League Unlimited, Gorilla Grodd assembles a new Legion of Doom, but, aside from opposing the Justice League, keeps their long term goals largely to himself. When it's revealed that his master plan is to turn everyone on Earth into apes, Lex Luthor shoots him in the chest, takes over the Legion, and redirects their efforts to more sensible endeavors (well, sensible for him, at least).

Hawkgirl willingly signed on to infiltrate Earth and learn the weaknesses and abilities of the planet's society, military strength and its heroes in order to help the Thanagarians subjugate the planet to build their hyperspace bypass. Once she learns the bypass will destroy the Earth, she defects and helps the League destroy it.

In The Powerpuff Girls movie, Mojo Jojo persuades the girls to use their powers to build his "Help The Town And Make It A Better Place Machine" - which, it turns out, is actually a device to allow Mojo to create his own army of primates powered by Chemical X.

King of the Hill had a show where Hank met another dad who was appalled with the way the history of the Alamo was being rewritten in the new history books the school had recently purchased. They both agree to put on a play that showed the history of the Alamo, with Hank building the set and the other guy writing. Turns out Hank's vision was of the traditional heroic picture of the battle he remembered from his childhood and the other guy had written a play depicting all the soldiers as drunks and cowards (not because he thought it was more historically accurate, just for the buzz such a "controversial" depiction would get him and his Hollywood dreams).

The Captain of the Guard allowed the Viking leader Hakon to invade Castle Wyvern in the premiere of Gargoyles in exchange for what is implied to be allowing Demona and the other Gargoyles to gain control of Castle Wyvern. When Hakon decides after capturing Castle Wyvern to smash the hibernating Gargoyle statues, the Captain of the Guard attempts to stop him, citing that this was not what they agreed to do. Unfortunately, Hakon forces him back and resumes smashing the hibernating Gargoyles, with the Captain of the Guard only being able to watch in horror at what he unwittingly brought about.

In the The Legend of Korra episode "Turning The Tides", Tenzin has to find members of the council in the city, so he tells his ex-girlfriend Lin Beifong to help his wife Pema around the house. Pema comes out with a dirt-covered Meelo and asks Lin to help her give him a bath, and then Meelo says he has to poop. This makes Lin say this exact quote.

Mako also says something like this in "Rebirth", when Korra rough-houses with him during an Airbending session.

Played far more seriously in Book Four, when Bolin comes to the realization that Kuvira's army, which he joined in order to aid the Earth Kingdom, has become a force of conquest that imprisons dissenters in camps.

There is also a story of an Irish-born soldier in the Parachute Regiment, who had a crisis of loyalty on a tour of duty in Northern Ireland. In the aftermath of the killings of Bloody Sunday,note A massacre of unarmed demonstrators committed by the Paras this individual is said to have deserted with a rifle and lots of ammunition and defected to the Provisional IRA.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy